Lovable Jock

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The Jerk Jock's answer to the Lovable Alpha Bitch. It is typical in most high school settings to have the jock as the bad guy but this trope is a method of portraying jocks in a positive light. After all, people don't automatically turn into sociopaths the moment they join a sports team.

The Lovable Jock differs from the Lovable Alpha Bitch in that while the Alpha Bitch can still be a bully to everyone except the main character to count, the Lovable Jock will be a nice guy by default. Though sometimes connected to one, he is rarely the main man of the high school and will usually be in contrast to an actual Jerk Jock. Expect the Jerk Jock to be blond while the Lovable Jock is brunet or redheaded though blond Lovable Jocks are common too. But that isn't a license to try anything funny on him or anyone he cares about; he willwipethegrasswith anyonewho dares.

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Examples:

Male examples:

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Anime & Manga

Ao no Flag has Touma Mita, the Big Man on Campus. He is the star of the school's baseball team with many women fawning over him. He is also a complete sweetheart who is nice even to the people that others seem to ostracize.

Tsubasa Ohzora from Captain Tsubasa is THE Lovable Jock and possibly the Trope Codifier in anime and manga. Yes, he's handsome and popular. Yes, he's a Child Prodigy in regards to soccer. But he works very hard for his success, truly loves the sport, and cares very much for his teammates and his friends.

Pretty much every school team captain is like this, with the exception of Hyuuga — and Hyuuga not only has genuinely good reasons to be harsher, but he does not get rewarded when he pulls the asshole card.

Eyeshield 21 is basically what happens when you take the most socially challenged kids in Japan and make them play team sports. Kurita is probably the most prominent, though there's also Sakuraba, Mizumachi, and Yamato.

Slam Dunk has Akira Sendoh and Kenji Fujima. Both are high-ranked aces in their school teams and very popular among girls, but remain polite and relatively down-to-Earth.

The new Subterra brawler in Bakugan: Gundalian Invaders is a football player, with the same football team as cheerleader and previous Subterra brawler Juli.

Masaki Miyamoto from Amakusa 1637, with his girlfriend Natsuki Hayami as a female example.

Mashin Hero Wataru Series: Wataru is an academically average kid who's talents lies on sports. One of the reasons the Dragon God chose Wataru to be their world's savior was by checking the amount of awards he received from sports competitions that was laid out in his bedroom. On top of that, he is an All-Loving Hero.

Mob Psycho 100 has the Body Improvement Club, a school club consisting of a group of fitness freaks that Mob joins in hopes of improving himself. They quickly accept him as one of their own and legitimately care for him as a friend rather than as a powerful esper like most others in his life.

Archie himself, who is portrayed as playing baseball, football, and basketball, although he's significantly less talented at it than Moose. He's still known as one of the nicest guys in Riverdale, walking disaster or not.

Ben Grimm, a.k.a. The Thing, from the Fantastic Four, who used to be a star football player in high school. He became fast friends with the intellectual Reed Richards, a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic, once the two of them met in college.

Spider-Man: While Flash Thompson is arguably the Trope Codifier of the Jerk Jock, he actually transitioned into becoming this after he and Peter started attending college. Even his high-school self, though often cruel and petty, had his moments. For all his bullying of Peter, Flash's admiration for Spider-Man was genuine, and went deep enough that he remained a vocal Spidey supporter even when the rest of New York was convinced that Spidey was a murderer.

In Robin Tim finds his burgeoning relationship with Zoanne threatened by a really kind tennis player and his own frequent absences. Tim can't even be mad at the guy since he goes out of his way to help Tim improve his tennis game without ever being condescending about Tim's shortcomings in the sport and the fact that he doesn't actually ask Zo out since he's aware there's something undecided going on between her and Tim.

Kyle Mizoguchi of Gotham Academy is a popular tennis star who is also caring, respectful and kind and willing to make an embarrassment of himself in front of the entire school to help his sister and her friends get away with escaping from the school chaperones to go looking for answers to one of their family mystery.

Ronnie Raymond, one half of Firestorm, as well as his teammate Jefferson Jackson. Gerry Conway wanted to invert the Spider-Man set-up, so he made the protagonist a likable but aloof jock, who is hassled by a Nerdy Bully. Modern adaptations like the New 52 tend to make Ronnie a lot less lovable.

During his football-playing days, BD from Doonesbury tended to oscillate between this and Jerk Jock.

Fan Works

In Under The Northern Lights Prince Vigg can be an immature brat but is usually quite a nice guy. His greatest interest seem to be winter sports, mostly skiing both cross-country and down-hill. He and his friends have apparently invented the snowboard as well.

In Bee Movie, these are the Pollen Jocks (i.e., the bees who leave the hive to collect pollen). When Barry and Adam are pretending to be Pollen Jocks to impress some girls, a pair of real Pollen Jocks come over and, while not revealing the truth, decide to mess with them by challenging them to come along on their next mission. When Barry actually shows up, they talk their superior into letting him come along.

Mitch from ParaNorman, who has a strong Big Brother Instinct towards his younger brother Neil, and who agrees to drive everyone to go look for Norman, apparently for no better reason than that Neil is worried about Norman.

Films — Live-Action

The Breakfast Club: Andrew, a wrestler who gets no attention from his father and resorts to bullying a nerd once (which is what lands him in detention) and feels awful about it.

Shawn Hatosy's Stan from The Faculty is a five star athlete who wants to work hard to better his grades and is probably the nicest in the main cast.

Oz from American Pie becomes this as he joins the glee club and gets in touch with his sensitive side. This is Played for Drama when he tries to convince Heather that he's not just a jerk jock.

Aaron from Mean Girls is seen playing football and is also on the swim team - and he's quite possibly the only wholly decent person in the cast.

Most of the guys from Remember the Titans, but Gerry sticks out the most. So does Julius — once they get over their mutual prejudice and become Fire-Forged Friends, they're the ones most committed to keeping the team from falling apart.

A few of the guys from Coach Carter, which is basically Remember The Titans with basketball instead.

Forrest Gump's eponoymous character is a kind and gentle (if very simple) young man and played football in college. He later becomes known for table tennis.

Paul from Election, while not too bright, is a genuine Nice Guy who votes for his opponent in the titular school election because he thinks it wouldn't be fair if he voted for himself.

Cappie from Lucas used to bully the titular character, but did a HeelFace Turn after Lucas helped him keep up with his studies when he fell ill and became Lucas's friend and protector, and it's not really his fault that the girl Lucas liked had a crush on him instead.

Varsity Blues has Mox first and foremost, but also the likes of Billy Bob and Wendell Brown.

The jocks in Grease are like this, although they still don't get the girl because they're too dumb and boring.

Flash Thompson of The Amazing Spider-Man initially started out as the resident Jerk Jock, but when Peter's uncle was killed, Flash goes to console Peter, and continues to do so, even when Peter shoves him against the lockers, telling him calmly to "let it all out". By the end of the film, the two have become good friends.

Dazed and Confused : Main protagonist Randy "Pink" Floyd is the school's star football player, but unlike most of his teammates, he is friendly to all of the cliques - his fellow jocks, the stoners, even the nerds. In fact, it's his insistence to hang out with "losers" like the stoner kids that proves to be a main point of contention between himself and his coach and some teammates, especially Jerk Jock Benny.

Wes from The Duff. Despite being introduced as a stereotypical football jock in his first scenes, he is actually one of the few people who try to help Bianca in the movie.

Tea and Sympathy has Al - an offscreen character in the original play. He's roommates with the Camp Straight Tom and tries to defend him from being bullied by the other boys.

22 Jump Street plays with this. The college football team welcome Jenko but not Schmidt. This is partially due to Schmidt making a bad first impression, particularly when he antagonises Rooster at a party.

Not Another Teen Movie: While Jake is certainly the Big Man on Campus, he's really not a bad guy. Spoofed however when he tries to be the "sensitive guy" by protecting his Love Interest's little brother from being bullied, only to receive an accidental punch to the face in return. Jake kicks the shit out of him in response.

Literature

Jake from Animorphs is introduced this way. He tries and fails to get on the basketball team, but it's stated right away his build and strengths are suited more for football.

Tommy Ross from Carrie. It's written that none of his classmates ( well, the surviving ones anyway, who tended to be some of the least popular kids in school) had anything bad to say about him. Unfortunately, he's usually considered a Jerk Jock by those who didn't know him but are writing about the incident at the prom.

Harry is an example, along with most Quidditch players who don't play for Slytherin.

Cedric Diggory is another prominent example, even though his house (Hufflepuff) isn't usually considered a "jock" house. He's such a Nice Guy that he once tried to forfeit a match immediately after winning. (Harry ended up passing out due to the presence of the Dementors while the two were racing for the Golden Snitch, and Cedric didn't notice until after he caught it.) His request was denied on the grounds that he hadn't actually broken any rules, so his win was totally fair.

Ron became a Quidditch Keeper in book 5 (But not in the movies until 6) and is a still pretty decent, if occasionally very insensitive, guy.

James Potter is overall this with elements of Jerk Jock (however, the only time he was a jerk was mainly beyond his complex and mutual hatred with Severus Snape and beyond that were his pranks.) After he 'deflates his head,' he is much more readily seen as one. However, it's difficult to guise this since the only persepctive we've seen this of him were the Maruders (his long time friends), Snape (mutual hatred) and Lily (she initially thought little of him though a large part may have stemmed from his and Snape's animosity with one another, since Snape was her friend until 5th year. Interestingly enough, after that point, she goes from supposedly not liking him in 5th year to dating him in 7th year and marriage soon after. This prompts some to assume Lily's dislike was actually her being a form of Tsundere.

Josh Newman from The Alchemyst series is stated to be on the football team though the books are set in the summer.

Frank Merriwell, hero of the book series of the same name is an exemplary athlete both in skill and sportsmanship, and an all-round decent chap. Other athletes in the story, not always so decent.

Calvin from A Wrinkle in Time, who's said to be a popular athlete at Meg's school but has no problems hanging out with geeky, bespectacled Meg and going on a multidimensional space quest with her and her brother Charles Wallace.

Mike Peterefsky in Dinoverse is friends to shy, bumbling geek Bertram and doesn't seem to have a mean bone in his body — he's actually worried that Bertram will think less of him when they're thrust into a chaotic unfamiliar situation. For all that, though, he was more or less going along with it when Sean was making plans to cripple a slower moving player on their team, until the adventure happens. When he returns he finds his courage and denounces Sean.

Live-Action TV

Big Wolf on Campus: Tommy Dawkins, the titular werewolf is a good-natured guy (if a little ditzy at times) and goes on to be good friends with the local weird goth guy, Merton. He also does what he can to help out the Monster of the Week, if said monster isn't actively trying to hurt someone.

Chuck: Devon "Captain Awesome" Woodcomb is a hyper-athletic, ridiculously good-looking surgeon who is genuinely just the nicest guy on the planet.

Dead Gorgeous: David is affable and good-natured, he is not bright enough to be the Big Man on Campus. However, when he finds out that a nerd is being bullied into doing his homework for him (he was initially told the nerd was doing it voluntarily) he quickly forces the bully doing it to stop.

8 Simple Rules: Kyle is said to have shoved nerds in lockers but we've never actually seen him bully someone and he seems like a nice enough guy.

Freaks and Geeks: Todd, despite dating shallow and vapid Cindy Sanders and being Sam's unaware rival, is a super nice guy who thinks Sam is cool and doesn't try to battle him for Cindy.

Friday Night Lights: Most of the cast, but especially Matt Saracen and Luke Cafferty. Taken further by Matt explicitly being stated as more of an art kid than a quarterback, he just happens to have the brains to back himself up on the field.

Mike and Matt are probably the only ones to have never bullied anyone, and are immediately True Companions with the glee kids. The same goes for Sam, who was initially the target of bullying and so is more of a glee kid who happens to be a jock than the other way around (which probably is also Artie, too, though he is in a wheelchair).

Finn and Puck (after some Character Development) also count. Finn was more immediately kind, and is the Quarterback, whilst Puck took longer and more realisation that high school bullying is fickle. And the same goes for Karofsky, who is a nice guy and even dates Blaine for a short while after coming to terms with his sexuality.

Out of the cheerleaders, Brittany probably counts as this since though she is part of the Power Trio, she is too sweet and dumb to be a Lovable Alpha Bitch, compared with the others.

House of Anubis: Mick Campbell is a jock, yes, but also thought to be one of the sweetest and funniest people in the house.

Kamen Rider Fourze: Shun Daimonji, the school's star quarterback. He starts off as a Jerk Jock taken to such an extreme that he even interferes with Fourze defeating the Monster of the Week because of a grudge with the titular Kamen Rider. Later, though, he owns up to his Freudian Excuse (a controlling, perfectionist father) and works toward becoming a better person. He even joins the Kamen Rider Club, and assists Fourze in battle by piloting the Power Dizer.

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Jason Lee Scott is into martial arts rather than playing for the Angel Grove High sports teams, but he otherwise fits this trope. His outgoing, athletic nature makes him a natural leader of the Power Rangers, and he functions as a Big Brother Mentor to geeky Billy Cranston, building Billy's self-confidence by teaching him martial arts. Rocky (football) and T.J. (baseball) were on their respective high school teams. Shane and Dustin fit this to a lesser extent (they're technically closer to the Jason example.)

A fairly straight forward example is Conner McKnight, a star soccer player at Reefside High. While he starts off with an edge, he quickly bonds with Ethan and Kira, and he grows kinder over time. By the halfway point he's firmly this trope.

Our Miss Brooks: Stretch Snodgrass, Madison High's star athlete is dimwitted, but good natured to the point where he's willing to transfer schools if it'll get his best friend Walter Denton on the Madison football team ("Two Way Stretch Snodgrass"). Stretch is apparently very popular; when he accidentally vandalizes the school in "Stuffed Gopher", Miss Brooks and Walter gets a crew of students to fix the damage and cover for him.

Scream Queens (2015): Chad Radwell. While initially appearing to be a straight up Jerk Jock, it's revealed that his best friend is gay and he's completely accepting of it - even warning his Alpha Bitch of a girlfriend not to spread rumours about it in case he gets bullied. More Hidden Depths to Chad are revealed as the series goes on - to the point where he walks out on his family after they're rude to Chanel and Hester. By the end of the first season, he's one of only two people in the main cast who has not yet tried to murder someone.

Jeff is the lone Nice Guy among the jocks, who get ridiculous privilege because of their athletic success. When Clay helps him with his schoolwork, he responds by trying to set him up with girls. Making it all the more heart-breaking when it's revealed he died in a car accident months ago.

Zach seems to also be slightly nicer than his meathead teammates. He makes something of a HeelFace Turn in the finale.

Jesse Sorensen of U Know Pro, TNA, Ring of Honor and many others. His gimmick is that of a former high school quarterback who still carries around a football to remember his glory days. Despite that, he's a very nice guy.

Really any wrestler who isn't a dickhead behind the scenes could qualify.

Video Games

From Rival Schools we have Roy Bromwell: star quarterback of Pacific High. In the first game, he was a Jerk with a Heart of Gold bordering on Jerk Ass and with a serious hate fore Japanese people due to his grandfather's bad experiences in World War II. He loses much of his jerkassery in the sequel, recognizes it was wrong from him to hate on others, and becomes an all around nice guy.

Akihiko Sanada from Persona 3 is a talented boxer with a laid back personality.

Most of the hockey bros in Check, Please!, overlapping with Academic Athlete in Shitty and Ransom's cases, although the two main characters don't play it quite straight. Bitty, the protagonist, is much more In Touch with His Feminine Side that the stereotypical male student athlete, and Jack is an emotionally inept perfectionist with anxiety issues, but they're both very sympathetic characters.

Web Original

Caleb from The Bright Sessions might come off as a Jerk Jock at first due to his anger issues, but he's a genuinely sweet kid who tries his best to handle those issues, is friendly to just about everyone, loves his family and his boyfriend, Adam, and wants to use his empathy to help people.

Martha Speaks: Alice Boxwood is very good at baseball, soccer and ice hockey and she's very active (if a bit clumsy). She's also a very good friend to the other children. Helen, Truman and T.D., her friends, are also very friendly. They're athletic too and sometimes play sports, but they're not as sporty as Alice.

The appropriately named Bulk Biceps from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is a massive musclebound over-excitable and completely adorable example of this. He also must have one heck of a gentle and sensitive side, if he's able to be friends with Fluttershy of all ponies.

Vince from Recess happily hangs out with a group of friends with various niches, and worships his "cool" older brother, unaware that he's actually a massive Geek.

Larry the Lobster is easily the strongest character in Sponge Bob Square Pants but he's also the friendliest after Spongebob himself. However, in a case of Early Installment Weirdness, the season one episode "Ripped Pants" features a song with lyrics about how "big Larry came around just to put [Spongebob] down". This is especially odd because even in this episode, Larry is portrayed as friendly.

Meat from Sym-Bionic Titan also falls under the "too dumb to be spiteful" category, but he's actually quite nice to Newton/Octus.

Cyborg used to be an athlete before he turned into what he is today in Teen Titans.

Tyler: While his sports skills aren't as good as he'd like them to be, he's still defined primarily by his sports playing  and he's also a devoted, patient boyfriend who's willing to befriend geeks and nerds and is adamantly against infidelity.

Rico from Moville Mysteries is a jock so skilled he plays in adult teams despite being in high school, is skilled in basically any sport he plays, has talent hunters constantly hounding him and is dumb as a sack of bricks. He is also the nicest guy at school and always tries to help people in need. And in the episode he accidentally became a supergenius, he wanted to use his talents in order to help the world instead of wasting them in sports.

The cheerleaders from Mahou Sensei Negima!: Misa Kakizaki, Sakurako Shiina and Madoka Kugimiya. Also the "sports girls": Akira Ookochi, Ako Izumi, and Makie Sasaki. Misora Kasuga and even Ayaka Yukihiro would count, but Misora can get very snarky and Ayaka takes a while to get there.

Minako Aino from Sailor Moon was previously a star volleyball player on her school's team. She is also a hyperactive, outgoing Bully Hunter.

Comic Books

In Spider-Girl Mayday Parker started out as belonging both to the jocks and the nerds of Midtown High. Her good friend Davida Kirby is a more straight example of this trope.

More from Archie Comics: especially in modern day stories, Betty is portrayed as an Academic Athlete who also does about a million different volunteer jobs around town and is well-liked.

Lynda of Halloween (1978) is a cheerleader and the Final Girl's best friend, considerably nicer than the other, non-cheerleader, friend.

The jock girls in Mean Girls are competitive but still shown as good people. Regina joins them at the end. This is said to be a good thing, as they're not afraid of her and so she doesn't bully them.

Bring It On was one of the first mainstream films to show cheerleading as a legitimate athletic pursuit, and subvert a lot of the negative stereotypes surrounding cheerleaders. Torrance for example just wants to help her team win, and she shows Tomboy Missy that there's more to the sport that what she expects.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy herself might count, as she was a cheerleader in her last school and she attempts to join them again. Back in her old school she just appeared to be a bit ditzy as opposed to actually mean.

Kelly and Lisa were on the cheerleading squad in Saved by the Bell. Jessie also joins as well. The girls are also said to play volleyball.

Pro Wrestling

Michelle McCool in her face persona was created around this trope, with the announcers talking up her athletic ability and vignettes also promoting it.

Naomi Knight from NXT season 3 is another example. The other girls were mostly talked up as being in fitness and power lifting but Naomi came from a dancing and basketball background and her athletic prowess was always referenced.

Video Games

Rival Schools: Tiffany, Roy's girlfriend, is a cheerleader and is mentioned to be outgoing and friendly from the very start, unlike Roy who first had to get Character Development.

Lucy from Harvest Moon: Animal Parade loves a number of sports, including running and dance, and she's also very friendly. Bonus points: Both her and Roy are small children; about six years old. Sort of.

Emi Ibarazaki and Miki Miura from Katawa Shoujo. Both are talented track runners despite their physical handicaps (Emi had her legs amputated and runs with prosthetics, Miki lost a hand and had only her stump), as well as very lovable persons. And Emi is one of the five possible love interests as well! Getting her route, however, will show the player that while Emi is a genuinely kind girl, she's got far more issues than you'd think.

Vivian Bergman (Ravian Merii) from Cherry Tree High Comedy Club is good at several sports, including hockey. Talking to her about sports makes it much easier for Miley to recruit her into the comedy club, as it's one of Vivian's favorite conversation subjects.

Web Comics

Ida Portinari from Academia, training to be an Olympic figure skater, tries to be an example of this, but can be a little bitchy now and then.

Community

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